Bloganuary day 20! Today’s prompt is:
What is your favorite photo you’ve ever taken?
So, the direct prompt, as is, doesn’t really lend itself to anything writing related for myself. Because, I’ve never taken any photos either for my writing or that has inspired my writing. However, photos in general are an incredible source of inspiration. My favourite resource for photo inspiration is Pinterest. For a number of reasons, but basically, it has a ton of photos that are incredibly easy to search through by keywords and topics, that you can then save to boards that you can return to over and over.
Any time I’m feeling stuck or needing something to give me a kickstart, I head to Pinterest and just start searching words related to my book, world, a particular scene, or a general topic of interest. The short story that I wrote called Aaron’s Autumn was written entirely as an exercise to see if I could come up with a story from nothing more than a photo, and I found the photo originally on Pinterest.
The photo below is one I found that was a huge inspiration for one of the locations in my book within the world of Eytherfel.
And this photo below is one that inspired a particular scene that takes place within a dream.
Ahead of me a staircase splits off to the left and right, and flowered vines drape over the bannister like a curtain. Behind me is a palatial foyer with stone pillars wrapped in vines pulsing with life. My fingers caress the intricate carvings of swirls and flowers in the column next to me. So much care and attention to detail is evident in the stonework.
Chapter five – The Elves of Eytherfel (working title)
While I’m not a photographer myself, I definitely appreciate beautiful photography and I love the inspiration that photos provide for writing.
However, just to tie into the actual prompt itself, below are without question two of my favourite photos that I did take. What can I say, I’m a mom and my twenty-something kids will always be my babies.
This is a tougher prompt to ask you to share on, because you’re not able to share photos in the comments. But what do you think about the idea of using photos for inspiration when writing?
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I am new to writing and blogging. Thank you for sharing the insight of photos towards writing. A definite tool I will be using.
Children, I have four all adults and parents, they are still my babies, and always will be.
I’m glad you found the tip helpful 😊 Photos (and Pinterest) have served me well over the years.
I suppose for many of us our babies will always be our babies, no matter how old they are. ❤️
Cool. Pictures are huge. makes a massive difference, especially in short stories where we don’t have the time to create the environment. Sometimes I’ve spent more time finding the pics, even if only a few, than writing the story. 🙂
Completely agree. They have saved my hide a few times when I thought I was stuck 🙂 Probably why I don’t fully understand writer’s block… I mean Pinterest! Problem solved 🙂
I appreciate your suggestion to go to Pinterest for picture ideas. I never thought of that. Like you, photographs often are a great source of inspiration for my writing, and usually they are compliments of some other photographer whose skill with the camera is far greater than mine. I do appreciate those children’s photos, though… and you are no slouch at capturing the people who matter in your life! That’s one of the reasons I use my camera, too <3
I’m glad the Pinterest suggest is helpful 🙂 I’ve been thrilled with the resource it’s proven to be. And thank you for the compliment. Would you believe that the black and white photo of my daughter was taken with an old digital camera about 18 years ago? I was tickled pink with that particular photo because it did turn out so incredible in quality too (for the device being used). 🙂